Newsletter – 2021-12-02

EPSO CBT/internal competition training: January

Generation 2004 is organising more training: computer-based multiple-choice test (CBT) training and AD5 internal competition training.

CBT (verbal, numerical, abstract) in English

This training is to provide you with techniques to pass the CBT phase of any European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) competition. Check ongoing EPSO selection procedures for CBT dates.  Continue reading EPSO CBT/internal competition training: January

Newsletter editorial – 2-12-2021

Welcome to this latest edition of the Generation 2004 newsletter, where we present our take on the recently announced internal competition and we invite you to come and discuss it with us or to sign up for training.  We look at the 3 ongoing elections: the low voter turnout, and the unicorns being promised and we encourage you to please use your vote! We’ve also collected all of your recent questions in a FAQs on ASTs and provided updates on our September petition to stop the obligatory return to the office and on the recent changes in compulsory presence.  We’ve even run through (almost) the whole alphabet to answer (almost) any question on the staff representation: dive in!

Enjoy the reading and, as usual, let us know if we can help with anything!

New competition – same old story!

*Update 08.07.2022: you can also take the same action (apply and appeal the rejection) for the 2022 internal competitions. We are also organising training for August 2022.*

Another Internal Competition has just been announced which is exclusively open to Temporary Agents (TAs), i.e. mainly cabinet staff (‘parachutage’?) as well as our JPP ”Jeunesse dorée”. Oops HR did it again Continue reading New competition – same old story!

No more compulsory weekly presence in the office

DG HR announced yesterday evening (24/11/2021) that going to the office one day per week will not be an obligation any longer. Therefore, teleworking 5 days a week will be possible for all, except critical staff. However, those of you who would like to come to work can still do it!

The obligation to telework four days per week does not apply to staff:

– who cannot perform their tasks remotely;

– who have to be in the office to ensure business continuity.

You mobilized for months on this important issue, you discussed it at length on My Intracomm, you contacted us through hundreds of emails and phone calls. More than 600 of you commented Commissioner Hahn’s message that stated: “All of us in principle will be at the office at least one day a week”.

And more than 1.000 of you signed our petition to Commissioner Hahn to support our note of 16 September 2021, where we asked him to postpone the forced return to the office. Already in September, it was clear that this Commission strategy to force people back to the office could carry major risks. Continue reading No more compulsory weekly presence in the office

Promising and selling unicorns

*This article was published in November 2021 in response to promises made during Brussels, Karlsruhe and Ispra elections. Here are the Karlsruhe 2021 results.*

On allowances to cover the additional costs of teleworking and other promises

It is election time for many sites of the Commission and there are two unmistakable signs for this:

  • Your inbox is filling with largely indistinguishable e-mails asking to vote for union X or union Y, because they have done SO MUCH for you in the last year (although for some of them, you cannot remember ever having seen any action or results).
  • The e-mails contain a hodgepodge of measures that they are demanding, often defying any sense of reality: unicorns, rainbows, a guaranteed lottery win … 

Continue reading Promising and selling unicorns

Update on our September petition to stop the obligatory return to the office

Latest update 24/11/2021: Work Done!!!  (quote from DG HR communication: “…the minimum presence of one day per week will for now be only on a voluntary basis…”)

Please add your signature! We already have more than 1000 signatures to our September petition in support of our note to Mr Hahn. We sounded the alarm concerning the premature push to Phase 3 of the Tentative plan for gradual return to the office before the worries and issues voiced by staff were addressed. Continue reading Update on our September petition to stop the obligatory return to the office

Assistants (ASTs) FAQs

*Update 21.11.2024 check out the European Court of Auditors, 2024, Special report 24/2024EU Civil service–A flexible employment framework, insufficiently used to improve workforce management: it concludes that ‘…the institutions do not focus on imbalances in the SC and AST function groups in their analysis, and concentrate instead on the AD group, and in particular the starting grades (AD5-AD8).‘ (P. 51) Check out their corresponding chart on p.51. Why on Earth focus efforts on part of a function group?[1] Where’s the global vision? Why tackle the hard stuff?*

Continue reading Assistants (ASTs) FAQs

Wake-up call for the administration – Voter apathy and low voter turnout

The local staff committee (LSC) elections for outside the Union, Ispra/Seville and Brussels have all had to be extended (see below).

For outside the Union the issues raised are long standing. Continue reading Wake-up call for the administration – Voter apathy and low voter turnout